A New Life
by phyca
Summary: DRR. John, Mon, and Gibson, the night after The Truth ended.


**A/N - Ah, my first published fic! I wrote this little thing immediately after watching The Truth. And then I actually sent it off to some DRR site (who remember The Vision? Anyone?) And now, as I try to gather up and finish all my fics, I add this to my fanfiction dot net collection.**

**Yes... I was a dripper. And still am. I know, I know. **

**Original author's note: My tricky memory places Gibson in Monica and John's care at the end. She swears he was standing there with them when they found the trashed office. My memory, though--she's always been the flaky type.**

* * *

And now it starts.

Monica takes a deep breath, eyes closed. She concentrates, relaxing her body, releasing her tension. 10-second meditation. It's all good. When she opens her eyes, she finds John looking at her. She can tell he's taken it in, but struggling to make sense of it all. She smiles knowing that he clutches the "I want to believe" poster, knowing that it was the first thing he retrieved, knowing how carefully he rolled it up, and how tightly he gripped it now. We all want to believe, John, in whatever it is we are searching for. John can only read the sorrow of her smile and turns away, back to the rubble, breaking the contact between them. It is then that Monica can feel Gibson's presence too. She looks at him, 16 or so, short and funny looking, but with an expression not seen on most teenagers, a concern that belies his age, understanding reached only through years of running and outsmarting people who want him captured or murdered. She wonders for a moment what it is like when your intelligence is your best resource. What kind of a match is that when your enemies have money and age and power behind them, and intelligence of their own, despite its being inferior? Gibson gives a slight shrug, barely perceptible, and Monica adds to her mental list of Gibson's advantages ESP. She knows he's reading her thoughts right now. Hey, she says casually. She can feel him say hey in return, though she can't really hear it. Gibson's eyes suddenly break from hers and she follows them to John, just as he slams the butt of his hand into the wall.

"God dammit!" He mutters some other obscenities; she knows he's trying to hold his tongue in Gibson's presence, too embittered to realize the futility of it.

"John, let's get out of here. There's no point in staying."

An hour later, they all sit around John's dining room table trying to eat pizza, but no one's got much of an appetite. It's still pretty quiet too; everyone's getting over the shock and trying to recover from the exhaustion of the last few days. Monica wants to talk, but looking at the harshness of John's face, his eyes fixed on a green pepper that had slipped off one of the slices and lay between his plate and the pizza box, she knew that now was not the time. She will let him put the pieces together in his mind before launching into anything. She will let him have the first word.

Gibson breaks the quiet, not by sound but by movement, getting up and taking their plates to the sink, and breaking John's view of the pepper for a few seconds.

He looks up at Monica and blinks a few times. "I think this is the end, Mon. Somebody in house has put an end to the x-files. What do you think they're gonna do with us? Somehow I doubt they're just gonna reassign us. I don't think they'll kill us--they'd of done that when they were cleaning out the x-files--they'd us cleaned us out too. But they sure as hell ain't gonna keep us around now." He stared down again at the pepper, but Gibson soon came round to wipe off the table. John looked up and continued. "I don't know much about all this alien business, but I've seen some unexplainable things." He seemed to want to say more, but was at a loss. Monica took the opportunity.

"Do you think maybe they only took them for a while? Perhaps they will weed out the incriminating evidence, only the files that relate to the conspiracy. There is still so much unexplained phenomena out there. They can't just dump the entire division. There are still cases we can investigate." She wanted to ease his worries, but under the circumstances, there was little she could do.

"They're all connected," Gibson interjected. "Everything. All paranormal activity can be explained by extraterrestrial life. I can't explain it fully, but maybe another 50 years or so of research, with advances in technology, could explain it all. Someone's going to make the connection to one case, and then to another, and so on and so forth. They're doing what they can to buy time."

"Covering their asses," John added downheartedly.

The phone rang before anyone could add anything. John answered. "Doggett...Yes, ma'am...Yes ma'am, I understand...Yes ma'am." He hung up.

"Who was it John?"

"Some girl from HR. Somehow she got saddled into giving me my walking papers. I guess I'm lucky. I helped a guilty man escape from a military prison, and all they do is fire me. Better than being shot dead."

Monica's phone gave a ring a few seconds later.

"Guess it's your turn now."

After she hung up, she turned to him. "Well, I'm not fired. I'm to report to a desk job in petty crimes tomorrow. At least they're letting me stay in DC."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to show up tomorrow. And I'm going to sit at that desk and do whatever it takes to stay there till I can find some answers. What are you planning to do?"

"I don't really know. Right now I'm gonna make sure Gibson's safe. After that, who knows, maybe I'll try and return to the police." He sank down in an armchair, dejectedly, and sighed. "Nah, who am I kidding? I can't just give up like that. I don't know that I can do much in the face of such evil, but I gotta do something. I was assigned to find Mulder, to protect Scully, then William. Now all three of 'em are out there, somewhere, dead or alive, I don't know, and I'm right back where I started, further back I suppose, 'cause I don't have the Bureau to work through now."

"Perhaps you are in a better position now, without the government hindering you."

"Yeah, maybe." He sat forward and laid his forehead in his hands. "Man, I'm beat."

"You think you two will be ok tonight?" Monica asked. She didn't want to leave—she didn't feel like it was right—but she certainly wasn't going to assume that he wanted her around tonight. They'd been spending the last several evenings together, working on saving Mulder's life, but he never stopped her when it was time for her to leave. Too much was going on then, she understood, and it was far too early for him to start back on the path they had been taking.

"Yeah, Mon, thanks. I'll call ya tomorrow."

"I think you should stay," said Gibson.

"Why's that, Gibson?" asked Monica, feeling a little embarrassed knowing that he knew what she was feeling, but mentally thanked him.

"I just feel safer knowing that you both are here." It was cheesy he knew, but they both needed him to say something. He could have said something more obvious, blurting out the truth that both tentatively acknowledged but failed to act on, but it was always better to let these things fall into place on their own, after a little push, of course.

"Yeah, that's fine. Gibson can have the guest room and you can have my room, Mon. I just gotta change the sheets. I'll lay out on the couch."

In the bedroom, Monica made sure they changed the sheets together. John's room was immaculate, as she had assumed, and his bed-making techniques spoke of years of Marine Corps discipline. But now, with Monica, it was different, not to mention quicker. This was something couples did together, another exercise in partnership. They slipped the fitted sheet over the top corners of the mattress, then John let Monica do the third corner and took the fourth corner, requiring the most effort, for himself. Normally Monica would have balked at such an action. Chivalry turned her stomach. Brad had been like that, taking the initiative and citing her gender as his reason. But John, she knew, had other reasons. She knew that he did it not only because he cared, but because he could. It didn't matter who she was, male or female, any age, if John could do it, he would. How hard would it be to treat this man to something, anything? But why did it matter? He didn't expect anything in return. Brad expected a good reward for opening doors and pulling out chairs and those expectations had been a major factor in the disintegration of their relationship.

"Here, lemme tuck those sheets in for you," he said, coming over to her side. He bent down and made short work of securing the sheets with military precision; she was pretty sure they wouldn't come undone for anything and wondered for a moment if she would even be able to move her feet around. They laid the comforter on top and before it could settle Monica let herself fall back onto the bed.

"Well, so much for all my hard work." He sat on the corner of the bed and stared at her. She didn't speak and just gave him time; she would always give him time. She would wait an eternity for this man, and frankly, just being near him, knowing that they loved one another, even if unspoken, was all she needed. She wanted to reach out, take his hand and tell him that she loved him, but that would be forcing him against a brick wall. She would not force John Doggett to do anything. Besides if he was able to do something, he would do it.

"It's been a rough week, Mon. You get some rest. If you need me, just holler." He patted her forearm and then gave her fingers a light squeeze before leaving her for the night.

Monica found it strange to be sleeping in John's bed without John. She knew she would end up here eventually, and she tried to comfort herself with the knowledge that soon he would be there with her. Whether soon meant tomorrow or the next year or 20 years from then, she didn't know. It was all relative, but to what she did not know. She lay for a while in the indention of his body, taking her comfort there, but soon found herself moving over to the firmer side. It would be hers one day, anyway. Tonight she claimed it as such, willing the springs to bend under her weight, the mattress to remember her shape.


End file.
